Oops, I’ve had a few emails from people after the last couple of ECO posts I’ve made, asking a completely legitimate question: "Err, what is ECO?"

Sorry. ECO stands for Enterprise Core Objects, and is the Rapid MDA (Model Driven Architecture) tool included in the Architect editions of Borland Delphi 8 and C#Builder. The aim of ECO is to increase the productivity of developers by using the UML model of your application as the basis for execution at runtime. ECO is for .NET, obviously, but is the evolution of the Bold product for Win32 Delphi which has been in production for many years (and won a Jolt Productivity Award, BTW)

Here are some other links to info:

• Technical ECO Whitepaper
• ECO Tutorials : Delphi / C#Builder
• Recorded Demo (requires free registration)
• Delphi 8 Trial download
• C#Builder Trial download
• OCL Tutorial (specifically for Bold, but applies to ECO as well)

The version of ECO in Delphi 8 is newer than the C#Builder version, and as such has a few more features, but at their core they are similar enough. The next version of C#Builder should include a newer version of ECO again, compared to what is in D8. This is just the nature of leapfrogged product releases.

Anyway, hopefully that gives some more info. As I continue my exploration of ECO, or as I answer questions from customers, I’ll try and post more ECO bits and pieces here.